Dive Brief:
- Potential consolidation deals among the nation's major health insurers are sparking antitrust concerns. Among those moves being watched: Anthem going after Cigna; Aetna going after Humana; and UnitedHealth going after Aetna.
- The Department of Justice plans to take a hard look if any deals are struck to address questions of whether mergers would suppress competition and present a negative impact to the market.
- If multiple deals are successful, the current big five companies could be reduced to three even bigger companies that each have an annual revenue of more than $100 billion, notes the Wall Street Journal.
Dive Insight:
Antitrust concerns will be among the top considerations both inside and outside of the DOJ, the Wall Street Journal suggests. It notes that the DOJ has challenged or threatened to challenge numerous health insurance mergers in the past.
According to a senior DOJ official quoted in the Journal, the department is preparing for a possible wave of mergers all at once and will look at their impact as a whole, to try to gauge their collective impact on the market and on consumers.
"We expect the Department of Justice's antitrust division to scrutinize every deal," said the American Hospital Association's general counsel Melinda Hatton in an email to Healthcare Dive. "We believe that consolidation of large commercial insurers is the root of higher prices for consumers. We would expect the antitrust division to ensure that none of these new consolidations would add to that problem."
The insurers declined to comment to the Journal about the potential for antitrust scrutiny.